


The Price We Pay

by quackers



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: M/M, Nightmares, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:09:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1444639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quackers/pseuds/quackers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While on the ship to the Eastern continent, Damien's nightmares begin to change. Slightly AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price We Pay

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't read the books in a few months, so there may be some mistakes. This does include brief, but explicit scenes of torture, so be advised. 
> 
> I wanted to write something that explored Tarrant's darker manipulations, which I feel have a tendency to be glossed over.

It started out subtly, something easy to dismiss. A single finger drawing a line down his cheek, a cold caress that seemed more a warning than a means to an end. 

Then the nightmares would start and any memory of an oddly timed touch would be obliterated under the crashing, haunting terror that left him exhausted each morning. That fed Tarrant just enough to keep him from looking any more like the undead. 

After a time, Damien began to appreciate the the sudden feel of chilled flesh against his skin, as it served to give him a small moment in which he could brace for the coming onslaught. For one whole week, he walked the planks of the ship with something resembling his usual energy, that brief moment of warning enough to keep the terror at bay and give him some semblance of real rest. In turn, Tarrant looked paler than was the norm, his movements almost human-slow to any that knew how to look, but Damien chose not to comment. If the Hunter was giving him this, than it was his decision to make. 

When those dreamt touches changed, he didn’t notice at first. Subtlety had always been a favored weapon of Tarrant. 

Those cold hands began to grow bolder, slipping down his arms to trace meaningless sigils on his wrists, or across the breadth of his back; a comforting touch that was complete at odds to the creature giving them. That should have been a clue. Tarrant would no more give selfless comfort than the ship would sprout wings and fly above the ocean. But the nightmares left Damien too drained to question it, and the daytime brought more important matters to his attention. 

A week passed, then two, then a third. Damien consciously strove to ignore his dreams in the sunlight, and avoided any mention of them to the Hunter. At night, a small part of him began to enjoy the wandering attention of long fingers while the rest of him braced for whatever terrible images Tarrant would create this evening. 

They changed every night, though all centered around him being helpless. Helpless to help innocents, himself, or even Erna itself. It was a familiar theme that he soon grew inured to. At least as inured as he could get. Oddly, he found he couldn’t begrudge the Hunter his meals. Tarrant had given his word to stay away from the others and he had kept it. And surely it was a small price to pay if it meant he had that kind of power at his back. 

Then cold lips brushed against the back of his neck; a quick tongue left a thin trail of moisture on his skin that cooled in a dreamt breeze. The gesture was so shocking, so surprising, that he was wholly at the mercy of the nightmare that slammed into him a moment later. He woke up more shaken than he had in months as Tarrant’s meal. There were tears tracked down his skin that he angrily dashed away as he made to confront the Hunter. But when he found Tarrant, the man stared at him with no expression at all. Not even a single trace of smug satisfaction. 

Damien was too confused, too tired to push the matter. “Damnit, Merentha,” he muttered, and thought he saw of flicker of something cross the man’s face, but he was too exhausted to interpret it. 

The touches disappeared altogether for a time, which he found himself grateful for, even if it left him with no warning when the nightmares came. He studiously ignored the guilty part of him that missed the caresses. 

An incredible sense of relief and excitement swept through the entire ship when land was finally spotted, making the mood merry and festive. Even Tarrant had a sense of anticipation about him, though Damien knew it was more the knowledge that there could be something more for him to dine on on those distant shores than one itinerant priest. 

When Tarrant made to shapechange and fly before them, Damien stilled him with a quick hand. “Stay for one more night. At least make sure we’re closer for a quick escape if there is something on those shores that you cannot handle. I’ve worked too hard at keeping you alive on this journey.” Not to mention that Tarrant’s power was likely to be his greatest weapon in this strange land, no matter what they found. 

The Hunter gave him a look of such affronted arrogance that Damien nearly laughed. “I would have sensed anything powerful before now,” he whispered. 

“Are you sure? You’re weak and we both know it.”

Tarrant’s eyes narrowed and fairly hissed. “And whose fault is that?”

Then a look crossed the man’s face, filled with such malicious intent that Damien couldn’t help but shiver. 

“Yes,” he drawled out, eyeing the priest like he was a sumptuous meal. “I will stay one more night. And see if I can’t recover my strength.”

“Wait a minute,” Damien, suddenly angry. Suddenly full of dread. “You gave your word that you would only feed off of me on this trip.”

“Yes. I did, didn’t I?” The Hunter smiled thinly. “Rest assured, little priest. I will not touch anyone else this night.”

Damien held onto his anger with a desperate grasp, because if he let it go, the sudden fear would overwhelm him. “Good,” he gritted out, then stalked away, telling himself that he wasn’t running. 

It took him hours that night to fall asleep, despite the ever present exhaustion that had been chewing at him since the very beginning. He knew Tarrant had something terrible in mind for him and he had no wish to see it. But eventually his own body demanded rest, and he fell into a heavy sleep between one blink and the next. 

It took awhile for his brain to comprehend what he was seeing. When it all clicked, he nearly threw up. Staring up at him was Hesseth, her eyes bright with anger and betrayal. She was naked, chained with cruelly tight bonds to a table that looked made specifically for the purpose, one end higher than the other. Channels were cut into the wood, designed to catch and direct blood towards bowls set at the bottom edge. 

There was a knife grasped in his hand, and blood slicked his fingers. One of Hesseth’s ears had been shorn off, and now rested on her stomach in such a way that she had full view of it. Blood dripped steadily from one of her hands, and with a lurch Damien realized that her talons had been pulled out. When he it dawned on him that it was he who had done this to her, had tortured her while she watched, he felt only a terrible glee. 

This, this would please _him_. He would be rewarded, he knew. Something clenched low in Damien stomach at the thought it, and the feeling wasn’t revulsion. 

He lifted the knife, and with careful, precise movements began to cut into the skin just under Hesseth’s collarbone. He went no deeper than the first hint of muscle tissue, but dark red blood began to flow immediately. Damien found himself strangely unmoved by the outraged whimpers of pain that clawed their way from Hesseth’s tightly closed mouth. She would be screaming soon enough. That knowledge left him shivering with anticipation. Not for causing her pain, but for his reward. 

Cold, cold hands caught around his waist, startling him. But he kept cutting, the feel of skin parting under his blade a visceral sensation that left his head reeling. He had to pause and gather himself before he could continue. It wouldn’t do to ruin this work. 

Just as he finished the incision, long fingers wrapped around his hand and plucked the knife from it. Those fingers turned him and he found himself facing Gerald Tarrant, whose silver eyes were filled with such cold approval that it warmed his whole body. 

“You learn quickly,” Tarrant whispered softly, intimately. He was dressed in a single silken robe, and Damien somehow knew that he wore nothing underneath it. 

His contemplations of the knowledge were cut short when Tarrant brought his fingers up to cold lips. A chilled tongue lapped at the blood on his fingers, like a cat licking at spilled cream. Quicksilver eyes watched him from under fine eyelashes, and stark satisfaction filled them when Damien let out thin breathy moan. 

Tarrant only let go when every spot of blood had been cleaned off of his fingers and palm, and Damien was positively squirming by the end of it. The Hunter trailed his hand across Damien’s chest, then grasped the edge of his own robe to pull it apart only an inch, but it left a tantalizing view of pale, delicate skin. Every movement was filled such calculated seduction that it was all Damien could do to hold still. 

The taller man loomed into his space and Damien welcomed him, tilting his head up for a caress of lips that could barely be called a kiss but left him breathless. 

“Finish this work to my satisfaction and I will reward you beyond what you can even comprehend.” There was such silken promise in the words that Damien instantly turned and grabbed another knife, not caring in the slightest at the pure betrayal in Hesseth’s face. 

“No, little priest. Use your hands.” Came the soft command, filled with dark humor. 

Damien didn’t question him, didn’t hesitate in the slightest. It didn’t occur to him that such an order was odd. That such a fastidious creature as the Hunter would never care to get his hands dirty if he himself was doing such work. 

The scream of pain from Hesseth when he grasped at the edges of skin and pulled was ignored in favor of the feel of Tarrant’s lean body pressed against his back. Hesseth’s bubbling sobs and pleading cries were as much background noise when compared to the low murmur of Tarrant’s promises. 

When his questing fingers found the first organ, something that looked intestinal, he barely noticed. The warm blood and viscera pouring over his fingers was nothing to the feel of cold, strong hands slipping under his shirt. 

It took a long time for Hesseth to die. 

Damien felt nothing but keen satisfaction when the light finally faded from her eyes, the only thing he hadn’t ruined at the bequest of the man at his back. 

There was nothing but pleasure when he realized he was completely covered in her blood. And when Tarrant looked at him with a satisfied grin that curved his entire mouth, Damien felt nothing but anticipation. 

It was the first time in twenty years that Damien woke up from a nightmare with a scream on his lips. And the first time in a decade that he had woken up to the feeling of stickiness. He knew with a wave of revulsion so strong that he choked on it that it wasn’t blood. 

He lay huddled in his hammock until well after the sun had risen. It wasn’t disgust or anger that stopped him from confronting the Hunter. It was the pure fear that someday that dream...that _nightmare_ would come true. A fear so intense that for hours he couldn’t think beyond it. 

It was little comfort to know that the fear was exactly what Tarrant had intended.


End file.
